Look, folks, I started down this BHO road — first posting on this subject on a prior thread and then starting this one — because I firmly believe that if you’re having trouble with your timing, or with making a string of notes sound like music, pairing your notes will help you enormously.

The opposing views (from guys who never tried to learn this way) have generally fallen into three categories: (1) that's not how Earl played, except when Earl did play that way; (2) that's not how you should play until after you already are a proficient banjo player (by which time, those with severe timing problems or the inability to produce a recognizable song will have long quit in frustration); or (3) but if you do it wrong, it won't sound good (as with everything else banjo-related).

I think I've said my piece. I would have liked to have heard from players who tried this technique early in their playing, and how it worked, or didn't work, for them. Maybe we still will. Despite the critics, I stand by my original position: pairing is a timing and rhythmic template that can quickly lift you out of a common beginner's rut -- the rut of playing a string of notes, often stopping and restarting, that doesn't sound very musical; and allow you, for the first time, to play something that actually sounds like the song in your head. 

Rich Weill,

I appreciate your initiation of this discussion. It's been a reasonable discussion about substantive aspects of playing the instrument.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rich Weill

Look, folks, I started down this BHO road — first posting on this subject on a prior thread and then starting this one — because I firmly believe that if you’re having trouble with your timing, or with making a string of notes sound like music, pairing your notes will help you enormously.

 

---

And that's entirely fair, Rich.

You and I have debated for many years. For example, you've argued in favor of practicing roll patterns; I personally found doing so destructive to the point that when I was starting out that I gave up the instrument for the better part of two decades before returning. I will not demand my students do them.

You know that I'm not locked into standard approaches and dogma. Heck, I even wrote a major treatise on that, a long time ago. Pretty entertaining thread, when you get down to it. Not going to wade through it, but you might have chimed in on that one. Lots of folks who no longer show up here - some missed, some not, sure did!

Where you and I do COMPLETELY agree is that finding mechanisms to get even the newest of players to start making real music - however basic - is the best incentive out there. This is my personal focus as a teacher: to remove the drudgery and mechanics to the extent possible, create the best possible pathways to success that I can, while still maintaining a solid understanding of mechanics and basic undestanding of how music actually works. I arrived here by an unconventional path, and that informs the way I try to help others.

Let me also add that I find Roger Sprung's work to be among the most wonderfully bonkers, entertaining and truly musical work I ever heard. He had a go-to-hell approach to the banjo that was incredibly fun and entertaining. That  approach was rather unique, and, as noted above, I suspect his approach as a teacher was similarly unorthodox - not that I'm a huge fan of orthodoxy. Which said: I've yet to hear of another teacher out there that presents information to students the way he did. It doesn't matter. You didn't just find a teacher - you found a guru who created a lifelong study and passion, and that matters most.

quote:

---

Originally posted by eagleisland

Let me also add that I find Roger Sprung's work to be among the most wonderfully bonkers, entertaining and truly musical work I ever heard. He had a go-to-hell approach to the banjo that was incredibly fun and entertaining. That  approach was rather unique, and, as noted above, I suspect his approach as a teacher was similarly unorthodox - not that I'm a huge fan of orthodoxy. Which said: I've yet to hear of another teacher out there that presents information to students the way he did. It doesn't matter. You didn't just find a teacher - you found a guru who created a lifelong study and passion, and that matters most.

---

Keep in mind that Roger picked up the banjo in 1947. There weren't a lot of resources available. The first instructional book -- Pete Seeger's "How to Play the 5-String Banjo" -- appeared initially in 1948, and wasn't about playing three-finger style. In New York City, few banjo recordings were available. According to Roger, Billy Faier "told me about Earl Scruggs. I went to Rosalie Allen’s record shop and bought Earl’s records, which started me on bluegrass. The record that I really tore apart to learn to play was My Little Georgia Rose, with a very nice solo by Earl. When I had that 78 record you could see the grooves where I kept repeating the banjo solo. I liked that song; it was clean and crystal; it wasn’t fast, so I tried to get the fingering." https://banjonews.com/2011-03/roger_sprung_interview.html [The earliest recording of that song I found was from Bill Monroe in 1950, two years after Earl left Monroe's Bluegrass Boys.] So in many respects, Roger had to figure it all out himself. Pairing was one of the techniques he came upon a few years later. I'm not sure how.

Roger started teaching in 1950. I've been told by one of his contemporaries that he was in extraordinarily high demand; that there was a waiting list to get on his lesson schedule. As with his learning to play, he had to devise a teaching method without any real help. And he stuck with that basic method for almost 70 years.

Roger had his own banjo language. "Pairing" was just one example. "Shifting"; the "joiner"; names for rolls like "inside-outside," "springing off," "on the beat," "rolling through the beat." He would refer to notes by number, representing their place in the scale. An A note on the 3rd string, 2nd fret was a "2 note"; a D on the open 1st string was a "5"; move it to the 2nd string, 3rd fret, it was a "box 5"; the D on the open 4th string was a "low 5." That way, when you capoed up two frets to play in the key of A, the notes could retain the same names.

I once asked him if he'd ever thought of doing a second instructional recording. After all, his instructional LP was issued in 1970. He said he had nothing to add. [Hal Leonard tried to get him to write an instruction book once. He declined.]

So when you say his "approach was rather unique, and ... I suspect his approach as a teacher was similarly unorthodox," that was principally because he had to invent his own orthodoxy. But remember this: Roger is in the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame as a teacher, not as a player. And not as a mass-produced teacher, but giving one-on-one lessons to over 3,000 students. [Even his instructional LP, later CD, was sold one at a time.]

A few years ago, a banjo player who wasn't a student of Roger, but rather a student of a student of Roger, put out an instruction book that clearly lifted large swaths from Roger's teaching method. At the time, Roger's income was primarily from teaching banjo, and he was very protective of his trade secrets. The author's defense: Roger's method needed preserving. I asked Roger about this. He shrugged it off, adding: "He got pairing all wrong." [The author sent Roger an advance copy of his book. Roger gave it to me. It didn't take long to realize what Roger meant.]

This has been a topic reasonable people can reasonably disagree on.

And totally separate from my belief in counting and playing straight and developing musical feel over time, I'd like to repeat something I've said countless times, including in the previous discussion if not also in this one: I'm a firm believer in listening to a recorded reference for whatever tab someone is trying learn: whether that's the source recording the tab purports to represent or an instructor's recording that accompanies the tab. Playing a TablEdit tab is not quite the same thing, because the midi doesn't sound human, even with one of the levels of syncopation added.

The benefit of listening to the recording is not only that you'll know what the tab is supposed to sound like, but it entirely removes the issue of whether the notes are straight or paired. It doesn't matter what they are or what you call them as long as you make your playing of the written tab sound like the recorded reference. The recording is doing the counting for you. You're imitating the sound you hear, same way we learn language. If you imitate it correctly, you'll put the notes in the right place. If that means they're coming out paired regardless of how you think you're counting them, you're playing musically.

Do that with enough songs, and it's how you'll play -- without even thinking about how you play.